tutorial - chinese new year nails

Happy Lunar new year to all those out there celebrating this year! I went with a couple of pretty simple techniques for this manicure & I have a surprise at the end of the post for you too! Here's the look we're going for:






What you'll need:
- a base coat & top coat
- a red (opi mat-adore red)
- a golden yellow (la colors yellow)
- a makeup sponge
- a black nail art pen


start with a clear base & a couple coats of red, letting each coat dry in between. Let the colour completely dry before continuing.


then rip off a piece of your makeup sponge & apply some yellow onto it. Sponge the colour onto the tips of your nails in thin coats. For a full detailed tutorial for this ombre effect check out the post here


Use the sponge to do single thin coats of yellow. Build up your colour so it's darker at the tips & don't worry about the texture and the mess on your fingers.


Use a q-tip dipped in nail polish to clean up the yellow off the sides of your nails!


We just grabbed this nail art pen by sally hansen a couple weeks ago but never really tested it out yet.


Since it's in the form of a pen rather than a brush, the application is quite precise & really easy to handle. The formula is not supposed to go on bare nails or skin, so it's not the same consistency as actual nail polish. It's a bit more inky (watery) so I had to go over a couple of parts more than once.


On my nails, I wrote "Xin Nien Kwai Lo" (新年快乐) which means "happy new year"... but you can write other lucky sayings like "kung hay fat choi". YUP. Just let that dry and then swipe on a quick dry top coat in single, quick strokes.


There you go!



& just because it's the year of the dragon, I did a quick Chinese dragon on Sam's nails! (She's a dragon!)


恭喜发财!